To Protect You
by No Illusions
Summary: "You don't con your crew!" Eliot had shouted that at her so many times, and then later with Nate... She'd thought she'd gotten over it long ago, but now she just wanted to rub it in his face, because this time he'd conned them. Tag to the Big Bang Job.


**A/N: So, obviously this contains serious spoilers for the Big Bang Job. Takes place about halfway through the episode, the night before Eliot has his big gun battle. Rated for some language. This story could be considered a prequel to my other Big Bang Job tag, "Who I Am," but it wasn't written to necessarily go with it.  
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**Disclaimer: Neither Leverage nor its characters belong to me.  
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><p>Sophie wasn't sure why she did it. She knew it was insensitive of her, knew that it was none of her business, but it had been a long day and she was tired and she'd been thinking and remembering and for her, that was never, ever a good idea.<p>

She was at his house before she really registered what she was doing, because when she was tired she got kind of bitchy, and she wanted to confront him with it all, to shove it in his face, and maybe she was just a little nervous for the next day, because maybe his words had scared her just a little.

Regardless, when Eliot opened his door and just _looked _at her, she almost left. "Can I help you, Soph?" he asked after a moment.

"May I come in, Eliot?" asked Sophie, taking refuge in formality, suddenly wondering what in the world she was doing there.

Eliot stood back to let her into the house without another word. Sophie wasn't surprised. He was too much the southern gentleman to leave her standing out on the doorstep for long.

Again, Eliot just looked at her. All of a sudden, Sophie felt all of her remembered anger rush back into her, and so she said the one thing she should never have said, because it went far beyond hitting below the belt: "So," she asked him by way of greeting, "What happened to 'you don't con your crew'?"

"Sophie." His voice was a growl. "Is this really the time—"

She wasn't sure where all of this anger was coming from—she'd thought that she'd gotten over it long ago—but suddenly she was so _mad _at Eliot, she just wanted to rub it in his face, because he'd spent so much time bitching about her and the Davids job and then Nate and Sterling, and now here he was, and _what _had he been doing for the last six months?

So her response probably had more venom in it than was strictly called for, but she didn't care. "Yes!" she nearly screamed at him. "You've been conning us, Eliot. For _six months_! You've been lying to us—"

"Damn it, Sophie, you don't understand!"

"Then explain it to me, Eliot!" she shouted at him, although she didn't actually want his explanations—it was so much easier to simply let her anger take control, to let it rule her. "Explain to me why, after all of your bitching about us conning you, you could possibly consider it alright to con us!"

"To protect you!" he yelled back.

"We don't need your protection!"

"Yeah, dammit, you do!"

"Nate was protecting us, too, you remember?" she asked him venomously. "And I hear you almost went all crazy assassin on him when you had him strapped to that chair in that jail!"

"This was different!" he half growled at her.

"How?" she asked him.

"Because we could have taken Sterling! As a team, with you back, we could have done it!"

"But we can't take Moreau?" she snapped angrily.

"No! You can't!"

"Oh," she said sarcastically, "But you can?"

"I don't know!" Eliot's response was out of his mouth before he could hold it back, and for a moment he and Sophie just stared at each other.

"You don't know?" she repeated after a moment, her regular voice sounding so quiet after their shouting. "Eliot?"

Eliot ran a hand through his hair, and for the first time, Sophie noticed how tired he looked. She wondered when the last time he'd slept had been.

"Moreau's dangerous," he told her, his voice also quiet. "No one touches Damien Moreau."

"But you were going to go after him on your own?"

Eliot shrugged. "I thought about it. Almost did a couple of times."

"Why didn't you?" Her voice held no note of accusation or reproach—she was merely curious.

"We'd get a job, mostly. There was just never a good time to do it." There was never a time he'd thought that he could possibly succeed.

"Oh," was all Sophie said. A moment later, her voice even quieter than before: "Eliot, what will Moreau do if he catches us?" She wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answer.

"He'll kill you." Eliot's voice was flat, his emotions carefully controlled.

"What will he do to you?"

"He'll kill me too. Eventually."

Sophie did her best to suppress a shudder.

"Are you afraid?" she asked him quietly.

"I just…" Eliot cleared his throat, no longer sounding quite so detached. "I just wish that you guys had never heard of Damien Moreau. I wish that you'd never gotten anywhere near him."

"But you don't wish that for yourself?"

"It's too late for me."

"It's too late for us too."

"That's what I'm afraid of, Soph," he told her softly. Sadly.

"Eliot," she said quietly, all of a sudden wanting to reach out to him, to comfort him. He was looking at her but not really seeing her, his eyes haunted. "You could have come to us. You could have told us." There was no venom in her voice now. The anger was gone from her veins, leaving her feeling drained and exhausted.

But Eliot just shook his head.

Sophie tried to tell herself that he didn't look more exhausted than he had when she'd shown up, but she knew that it was a lie.

A few minutes later as he showed her out the door, he turned to look at her. "I'd do anything to keep ya'll safe tomorrow," he promised her, his voice gruff. "Anything." Either Sophie simply missed the implications of the statement, or she was afraid to hear them. But twenty-four hours later, when it was all over, when they'd confronted Moreau and survived it, she still had no idea. She had no idea what Eliot had done. What he'd had to do. To keep them safe.

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><p><strong>Please review! By the way, in case it wasn't clear, what Eliot did to protect the team was killing Moreau's men so that Nate and the Italian could escape. And, although they did manage to take Moreau down (in this, I had Eliot saying they couldn't), in order to do so, Eliot had to kill people. With guns. So I'm still considering it a job gone wrong. Very, very wrong.<br>**


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